Investment is needed to reduce flooding risk
Action and investment are needed to reduce the risk of flood and drought and protect water supplies from the impacts of climate change across Scotland, a utility company has claimed.
A new plan published by Scottish Water outlines the efforts it feels it will take to make the country’s services and infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather.
Over the past decade, the public utility – which provides essential water and waste water services for five million customers throughout Scotland – has responded to the changing climate, by assessing risks and building resilience into its operations and investment plans.
But, with growing impacts on assets and services from more extreme weather events locally and nationally, the new plan highlights the steps that must be taken to go further and faster in adapting the assets and services to ensure they remain reliable and sustainable.
Scottish Water’s Climate Change Adaptation Plan describes the consequences on water supplies, water quality, sewer systems, infrastructure and the environment unless action is taken.
Chief executive Alex Plant said that significant investment is needed over the next 25 years to guard against the worst consequences of the declared global climate emergency.
He declared: “Climate change adaptation is not something we can choose to do; it is something we must do. The world has already warmed by more than one degree over the past century.
“We can expect drier and warmer summers, wetter winters and an increasing number of severe storms that will affect our water and waste water services.
“Our assets were simply not designed to cope with the more extreme weather conditions we now face on a regular basis.
“They are also ageing and will deteriorate more quickly with climate change. This makes our objectives to improve drinking water quality, ensure a secure water supply and improve our environmental performance even more challenging.
“We need to invest to address these issues and build climate change adaptation into our forward plans if we are to ensure that we deliver a reliable, resilient and sustainable future service for our customers and for society.
“Transition of this scale, of course, comes at a cost. The report shows that adapting the assets that serve Scotland to be resilient to more challenging climate futures will need new investment of £2 billion to £5 billion over the next 25 years.
“All of this underlines the importance of maintaining a stable funding and investment trajectory over the short and medium term.”
Mr Plant stressed the need for collaboration, partnership and innovation to make a real difference in the long-term and to keep costs as low as possible.
The Climate Change Adaptation Plan outlines several key issues facing Scottish Water, including drought; deteriorating water quality; flooding and environmental pollution and waste water and environmental quality.
Without adaptation, the plan states people could experience water shortages, deteriorating water quality, increased environmental pollution risk, biodiversity loss and damage to infrastructure such as waste water treatment plants flooding.
It also highlights that Scotland’s current water supply deficit during drought could increase four-fold from 60 to 240 million litres a day, with more sustained low rainfall periods anticipated.
People could also experience more water main bursts by 2050 due to much drier ground conditions and consequent ground movement, according to the document.
Preventative measure featured in the report include working with people to help them use less water, reducing leakage, replacing old pipes, improving the connectivity of water supply systems, and increasing reservoir capacity.
In terms of water quality, by 2050 an estimated 200 water sources are at greater risk of seeing increased manganese – a naturally-occurring element which can discolour water – and algal blooms.
The recently-released report also predicts that 4800 properties across the country could be at risk of sewer flooding by 2050 compared to 2500 currently, and adds there’s a risk of a 20 per cent rise in overflow discharges.
Scottish Water states that efforts to guard against this include improved monitoring and working to keep surface water out of sewers.